Tecate 3-Pack $5.99 @ Smart & Final

I wasn’t originally planning on writing a review this week but I decided to stick with my guns and write at least one review a week as previously promised unless something else came up that prevented me from writing one like sickness.

Today, I decided to go with a mass market brand. Tecate Original. A Mexican beer. Nothing fancy. By all standards, it tastes about the same as any other mass produced beer. Granted, this is supposedly an imported beer and I suppose, by all accounts, it is imported but if the parent company that’s distributing this beer is Anheuser-Busch, I guess one can potentially categorize this beer as an American beer but for my blog, I’m still categorizing it as an imported Mexican beer.

Moving on. Taste-wise, I’d say that it tastes about the same as a typical Budweiser or a Rolling Rock. It is a lager, after all, albeit, a Mexican lager styled like an American lager. What does that even mean? Well, I suppose in plain English, it means that it’s a lager made by a Mexican company that, in an attempt to broaden their audience, decided to “water down” its beer for the American audience because the average American cannot and does not like what a real beer should taste like.

Admittedly, it does taste a bit different from a Budweiser in that it has that ‘twang’ that you get when you drink a Corona. It’s rather hard to describe this taste as I don’t really have the words to describe it. All I can really say here is that this ‘twang’ is only inherent in imported Mexican beers so you’ll taste this flavor in, say, a Corona, a Modelo (whether the Modelo Negra or the original Modelo), a Victoria, a Montejo, or a Dos Equis.

Other than this ‘twang’ that is inherent in Mexican beers, it tastes fine. It’s easy to drink, it’s fairly cheap to buy, and the ABV (alcohol by volume) is at 4.5%, which is average for this type of beer when compared to similar mass market brands. The only reason why I would consider buying this beer is because between Bud Light and Coors Light, I happen to like Tecate Original as soon as it became available. Just so you’d know, Bud Light and Coors Light were the first to bring this 3-pack 16.9 fl oz cans to the American market, so far as I know. Afterward, Budweiser started making their original in these tall cans and in 3-packs, for that matter. I’m surprised that my supermarket hasn’t produced (or at least allowed) the distribution of the original Coors as of yet. At Smart & Final (as well as CVS and Rite Aid), I only ever see: Tecate, Budweiser, Bud Light, and Coors Light in a 3-pack for $5.99. It used to be at $4.99. And then Modelo introduced their 3-pack but it’s at a whopping $7.49, which is also true for Newcastle, apparently.

Anyway, for a cheap buzz, I would either go with this, the Tecate Original 3-pack, or I would with Bud Ice. Both would do the job just fine. I just like the tall cans more because it’s easier to find a recycling center to get my money back than finding one that accepts glass bottles for some odd reason in SoCal.